A Detective's Novel
Skip · Narrative · 2016
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $1.99.
- Length
- 1.7h
- Value
- $1.17/hr
- Reviews
- 68% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, DirectX compatible card, 184 MB of storage. Windows only.
On a cold November night in a desolate estate deep in the mountains an innocent life has prematurely perished and its up to the player to find out who did it.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $0.30, set in March 2023. 76 discounts in the 10 years on record. They run about 51 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 12 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
It is cheaper than 86 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 85 percent. The games it most resembles do better on the same math. Kona ($14.99, scores 41) and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter ($19.99, scores 52) both outscore it.
What players say
Short, focused, and well-written. A Detective's Novel delivers a tight little story that scratches the mystery itch without overstaying its welcome.
I am 32 years old. My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old. When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand-the hand I...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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A Detective's Novel scores 23/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/503820/a-detective-s-novelThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 1, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.